You Are What You Eat
by The Almighty Ro
Summary: There is a reason why eating Sopor slime is considered taboo in Alternian culture.


Disclaimer: I do not own, claim to own, or pretend to own the characters involved in this work of fiction. Especially the one who's gone cold turkey.

Enjoy, su!

**You Are What You Eat**

When it was suggested that you all take one of the Sopor refineries floating just outside of orbit of Alternia as your first act of rebellion against the Empire, everyone had been all for it. It wasn't a particularly large ship, or incredibly strategic since it was stationed so close to the home planet, but it was important and - even better - it was armed to the teeth. Your fish brother had outlined every way this was beneficial to your ragtag collection of misfits in that wavy accent of his until Feferi had looked to your red brother and he'd shrugged his assent. 'May as well,' it said, and she'd given the go ahead just like that.

The thing about your redblooded brother, your Heart, your Karkat, is that he can be all calm nonchalence in front of others and in front of you he just falls apart. So when the plans are made to take the ship and the meeting is adjourned, he yanks you back to his respiteblock and proceeds to go to pieces at you as you touch him all over. He confesses all his fears to you like a sinner asking for absolution, lets them stream from his mouth into your's, and you drink them in until it isn't words he's spewing and the only thing he's got coming out is your name mixed in with soft moans and sighs. You make him forget his fears with soft touches and maybe also a touch of your voodoos, but you don't think he'll mind none once he's blissed out and purring later, half drunk on post-pailing pheromones and the coolness of your body.

(Brother burns so hot you wonder how he hasn't burned out yet.)

"You don't have to come with us," you remember him saying, voice soft as you please against your collarbone. You're both curled around each other in the cool lull of his 'coon and his voice is thick with sleep and what may be some approximation of happiness. The thought makes something warm bloom in your chest. "You can stay, I can stay-"

You shushed that noise right out of him, though now maybe you wish you had heard him out. Instead you told him that he had to go, he was the adhesive what kept you all stuck together, and there was no way you'd stay behind while he went on ahead. "'Sides," you'd added with a touch of pride, "I ain't touched a pie in near a sweep."

And that was that.

(Except it wasn't.)

The taking of the Epidote was far easier than it should have been; hardly a claw was raised against you as you and your compatriots streamed in, practically gave up the moment they caught sight of you. The captain fell at your Heiress' feet and cried in what Equius later described as horrified relief as he handed over control of their facilities and everyone was just so baffled that no one dared question their good fortune, even Vriska. Within three hours of being aboard the behemoth, everything was your's from the command room to the crew, and especially the lower levels of the ship where they produced Sopor.

But everything felt strange. No amount of psychic prodding produced anything other than relief and the kind of haunted horror that is usually only seen in trolls who have spent most of their adult lives killing in the name of an Empire they thought would provide for them, and when asked they just went dead silent. The feeling that something wasn't right was creeping down into your bones as you, Karkat, Feferi, and Eridan were led toward one of the lower factories, past various locked rooms and even what you thought was a lab (there were trolls in white coats standing around and looking all kinds of grim and resigned, like they were expecting some kind of retribution). Any soldiers you passed all but fell over themselves to get out of your way and you heard whispers up till the moment you stopped before a huge, steel door.

The psychic feedback radiating off it was beginning to give you a headache and set your blood running.

"This is the extraction room," you heard the brother who'd led you all down there say. His paw was hovering over the thumb print pad, like he couldn't get his decide on whether to open it, and it was shaking something fierce when he turned his gaze back to the four of you. "Please understand, we didn't have any choice..!"

"Just open the fucking door you useless asswaffle," your bro up and snapped. There was a vein twitching in his brow that your fingers itched to reach out and smooth it down, but you refrained.

Finally the brother pressed his thumb into the pad and stepped aside with his eyes screwed shut as it hissed open with a cloud of smoke. The psychic assault didn't start immediately as you would expect, but instead trickled out slow like molasses until you were doubled over and howling in pain and the pain of maybe a million other brothers and sisters and Karkat was making some noise about shutting 'the fucking door right fucking now or so help me god-!'

You don't remember anything after that.

When you woke next, pan aching and bones like jelly, you were splayed out on a concupiscent couch with Karkat pacing up a storm beside you. He's relieved to see you awake to say the least, once you finally croak out his name, and he goes on and on about stringing up the troll who'd been with you by his bulge before you hush him up.

"What happened?" you managed to croak and he got all quiet, eyes not meeting your's. "Karkat."

He'd made a noise and tried to draw away from you but you weren't having none of that; you'd wrapped your arm around his waist and held him down until he'd screamed in frustration. "It's the Sopor!" he'd screamed. "They make it out of fucking trolls!"

Your arm goes slack but he doesn't make any move to get away, just sits there, still as stone as his words sink in and the bottom of your digestive sack drops out.

"...what?" you ask and your voice is so small.

He swallows. "The limebloods. They're...they aren't extint. She - the Condesce - has them all up here, She's been breeding them up here for hundreds of sweeps. In ships like this all cross the Empire." Here he hesitates and you can't much blame him with the way the color is seeping out of his skin. You think maybe you look just as sick, maybe sicker all things considered, because you feel like your digestive sack is slowly clawing it's way up your throat as liquid horror sinks into your bones. Karkat is looking at you now and you're looking back because you don't know where else to look. "The one's that are psychic, She has their brains ripped out and installed in recuperacoons. The ones that aren't...they make this weird venom, like slitherbeasts, and they hook them up and milk them until they die and then grind up what's left to make Sopor-"

You're up and running for the ablution block before he can finish, bile caught in your throat and then rushing out as you drape yourself over the toilet and heave. There is a warm, tentative hand on your shoulder as you spew your guts and soul out and you reach for it and grip it like it's the only thing tying you to your husk of a body. Karkat was with you in the beginning too, you remember, when you gave up the pie and withdrawal shook you to your very core. The memories of that time fill your pan now; from the way every ion of your soul cried out for the sweet-sour taste of the Sopor of your tongue, to how the smell of cooking meat sent you running to empty your stomach, to every foul word you called your brother as he helped you through it; he helped you wade through the fog and into the light and motherfuck if he wasn't going to help you now.

"Tell me," you wheeze into his stomach when you come back to yourself. Your arms are wrapped around his middle and you are crying purple into his shirt as you remember each and every one of the dying screams of the trolls locked behind that huge metal door, how they rang in your pan and filled the holes your addiction left behind. Everything had felt full up for the first time in a long time; so full that it hurt. "Tell me about those motherfuckers and what's all to be becoming of them."

"Gamzee-"

"_Tell me Karkat._"

And he does.

**End**

My third round entry from the HSWC, which I am just now posting here as well. Figured I'd get it out of the way before I start posting smaller stuff for Homestuck (of which I have a few things).

**Reviews save lives. They also help the author potentially turn this into a series.**


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